Let’s say you’ve got 6,000 pounds’ worth of heavy equipment to install on the roof of your big industrial building, and you’re looking at options on how to accomplish the tall task.
On second thought, scratch that — just look to the skies instead. On Saturday, in Cullman, that’s where all eyes were pointed, as a massive Black Hawk helicopter made a short morning’s work of lifting ten giant exhaust fans onto the waiting metal roof at Rusken Packaging.
Though the fan units tipped the scales at 600 pounds apiece, the entire operation required only about an hour of actual time in the air for the deftly hovering helicopter. For nearby onlookers and off-duty Rusken employees, the spectacle, just a stone’s throw from Childhaven Road in north Cullman, made for some fun, free and decidedly blustery entertainment, as traffic slowed to a crawl along the Walnut Street corridor where the ace Black Hawk pilot performed a deceptively delicate heavy-lifting act.
“We had employees come out on Saturday to watch it. People brought their kids,” said Rusken project coordinator Cameron Bailey on Monday, while crowning the weekend’s eye-catching operation an overall success. “That pilot was very talented. It took the helicopter less than an hour, I’d say maybe 45-55 minutes, to set all ten fans.”
Rusken’s main production facility has seen numerous expansions during the past three decades since its 1996 construction. Those upgrades have helped the local maker of bespoke boxing solutions step up its operation over the years, even as each addition also created new demands on the facility’s ventilation.
“We’ve expanded onto the building numerous times, and have kind of blocked out our air flow a little bit,” Bailey explained, noting that the company chose an air-based install after weighing the pros and cons of attempting the same feat using more conventional land-based methods.
“The center of the building is the highest pitch in the plant, and we wanted the fans mounted at the highest point,” he said. “Well, a crane can’t really reach because of the lateral distance to the center of the building. It would have been a lot more labor and expense to get it across the roof to where you wanted it to go. And, it would have taken a lot longer.”
Now in its 50th year of operation, Rusken Packaging Inc. got its start in Cullman in the 1970s. Though the company now has 19 facilities spread across ten U.S. states, Cullman remains its corporate headquarters as well as an active production center. Approximately 420 people work inside the Cullman production plant across a daily two-shift schedule.